Monday, May 14, 2007

so after two full days of blogger.com appearing to be down, i went straight to the site and was able to post. maybe there is something i don't know, but should, and the site did not alert me to. therefore blogger.com stinks, QED.

Son,

You have heard of genes, which are how parents pass on a mix of their physical traits to their children. This is why you and Sister have hair color lighter than mine but darker than your mother's. The scientists who study genes are called geneticists.

There is no gene that causes my nerve problem. None of my ancestors have had this problem. My problem happened randomly, or by chance as far as we know, because no one knows what causes it. The scientists who study the causes of diseases are called epidemiologists. They have been looking for over 100 years for the cause of this problem. I am not the only one who has had this problem. The epidemiologists and geneticists think this is one of the most interesting diseases because it does not follow expected patterns -- children don't inherit it genetically from their parents like hair color. With many physical problems, there is an inherited factor. For this reason, scientists studying this problem have looked very hard for a genetic association between parents and children. There isn't one. And there are no known factors like food, birthplace, or job which might explain it.

What this means is that Sister and you do not have a bigger chance of getting this disease because of me. If anything, you have LESS chance.

Contributors

I am a husband and father of two young children. On January 13, 2004, at 41 years old, I was diagnosed with a 100-percent fatal, presently incurable disorder called ALS. If you know me in real life, and I didn't personally invite you to read this blog, please send me an email about reading this blog.